1. You must prepare fully for the opportunity that an interview offers to learn more about the role and its challenges. Study these things before the interview so you can ask the right questions in it. Your marketability will be vastly enhanced if you take the position (politely and agreeably) that you are not just a seller but are also a buyer, and if you are able to ask the right questions at the right time.
2. You will need to understand your transferable skills and to articulate them in a way that makes them attractive to someone who doesn’t understand your current work environment or the challenges you face in it.
3. You must become comfortable with talking about yourself and what you want, enjoy etc. You must also be able to do this succinctly – in several minutes – in order to retain interest.
4. You must become good at framing your career journey in a way that creates interest and prompts desire to gain a deeper understanding of you. Remember that in a movie, the same event can be a tragedy or a comedy, depending on how the Director wants it to be seen. You have the same power. We have all had negative experiences in our careers. Put the focus on the positives.
5. You will need to understand your achievements and their value, and to be able to recall and recount them compellingly and with ease. Both of these things will require serious preparation. If needed, seek out assistance to ensure you can articulate and discuss them effectively.
6. Familiarise yourself with behavioural interviewing techniques. Behavioural interviewing is widely used as a way to assess depth of experience and focus on and ability to achieve results. Use the STAR format (Situation, Task, Action and Result) when answering questions such as those about how you handled or would handle a particular situation. Be sure to have more than one example for each situation that is likely to be relevant to the requirements of your next role.
7. Be prepared to summarise why you are the right person for the role – succinctly.

Remember, the candidate who gets the job will be someone whom the employer is confident can do the job, and above all, someone whom they LIKE! You must be so well prepared that your interviewer will see you at your best.

If you are ready for a career change or advancement that will bring REAL success and fulfilment, but feel you require some personalised advice on how to best go about it, contact us to arrange a free, no-obligation consultation with an EPR career management expert. We have assisted thousands of managers, professionals and executives to achieve breakthrough results over the past 17 years. The odds are we can help you do the same.

Here’s to your successful career!

The “Strategic Approach” to career management that I promote stresses the importance of being able to “sell yourself” as the best solution to an organisation’s needs.

In today’s economy, it helps if you think of yourself as being just like a small business. And the success of your business in the market depends on two things:

• What you have to offer, and
• How well you market and sell it to the right people.

Nowadays, you are selling to a very sophisticated market. As you may have noticed, employers tend to be focused on getting a good return on their investment – and they’re generally good at doing so.

Your career, not your house or your share portfolio, is your biggest investment. It’s the one that makes all the others possible. As with all investments, your return will be commensurate with your level of skill in managing it.

The value you offer to the market is intangible, and selling a complex, intangible product to a sophisticated buyer is at the pinnacle of sales difficulty.

To get the best “Return On Effort” that your investment in your career deserves, you need to become the best salesperson possible for the value you offer.

The need for this mindset and skillset may not always be obvious. But the reality is, if you don’t market and sell yourself well at every stage of the process, you will probably never know how much more you could have gained by doing so.

In my next post, I’ll share with you the 7 steps to selling yourself effectively as the best solution to an organisation’s needs.

The greatest mistake in career networking

The greatest mistake in networking for a career move is to focus on job openings rather than interviewing to find help and advice and get brand exposure (for yourself).  Networking is not about ‘getting a foot in the door’ – or even getting a referral to someone else who might have a job for you.

Why is this a mistake?

• Your contacts may have information on one or more of your targets, but are unlikely to have information on current openings,
• You’ll run out of contacts quickly, because your contacts won’t want their contacts to be exposed to job requests,
• You’ll close doors with your own contacts, that would otherwise remain open,
• You’ll become demoralized and either:
• Push even harder for a job and close even more doors, or
• Conclude that the networking strategy ‘doesn’t work for you’ and revert to a less confronting (but also vastly less productive) strategy.

This is a game of skill.

Do you need to develop these skills?
If you have the will but not the skill, talk with us at EPR.  It’s very learnable, and very effective.  With the support that we can provide, you’ll soon be on your way to a far more satisfying future.

The answer has two parts:

1. Treat networking as a business project, and manage it accordingly.
2. Make the goal of this networking Market Research – not simply job search.

Your career networking project

The success of any project depends not only on how good the strategy is, but on how well it is implemented.

Until now you should have been working on your career strategy. Next, launching yourself into the market with networking is the way to start implementing that strategy.

Networking means meeting people

To succeed, you must create a situation where people are happy, or at least willing, to give you their time.

To make this skill work for you, be sure your objectives in each meeting are ONLY to

1. Gather information, advice and contacts (referrals), while
2. Creating market awareness of your ‘brand’.

Why do you need to focus on both aspects? Because:

1. You need information, advice and contacts in order to continually refine your search and your awareness of where you would like to work, and
2. No one can offer you a role if they don’t know you’re there.

Remarkable things happen in the careers of those who possess the skill to do both of these things. The skill of networking can take you to just about anywhere you want to go.

Networking tip: Be an interviewer

Success in this networking requires taking the interviewer role. To do this, practice asking questions that open the door for you to sell your experience, skills and values – not simply asking about job openings. I’ll explain this in more detail in my next post.

(Note: This post continues the informal series about finding an ideal new position – please see preceding posts for more background.)

In my last post we discussed how to cut through job market competition, and part of that involved the need to identify roles that suit you when you’re looking for a new position.

Today, I’d like to take that a step further and discuss how to identify the perfect roles for your skill set and goals.

Your goals are the best place to start. Why? Because the fact is that until you reach a position that meets your goals, you’re never going to be satisfied with your job. And you won’t do your best work without the commitment that comes from focusing your energy on what you really want to do. It stands to reason then that if you want to be happy and successful in your job, you need to find a role that is either your dream job or a stepping stone to it.

So pursue what you truly want – and not what someone else wants for you. You may need help in drawing this out of your own mind. As a start, think about these simple questions:

• If you could write your own role description, what would you spend 40-50 hours a week doing?
• In what kind of circumstances – e.g. culture, organisation, location etc – would you do it?
• Is it possible to make a satisfying income doing that?
• Do you have the right credentials/qualifications if they are required?
• Are they essential to perform effectively in the role, or just specified?
• If they are really essential and you don’t have them, can you acquire them?
• If you can’t make a satisfying living from that activity, or you can’t get the qualifications for it, what is another option that you would find rewarding?

You can repeat these questions as often as necessary to help you identify the type of position you want to find in the job market.

Next, you’ll also need to know why you want what you are pursuing. Achieving your goal may be challenging so you’ll need the kind of motivation that comes from deeply understanding why it’s important to get what you want.

And you’ll need to take action.

You see, action will become your greatest ally if you take it, and your worst enemy if you don’t. This is because we humans are goal-seeking, habit-forming creatures. When you commit wholeheartedly to obtaining what you want, every positive action you take will enhance your confidence and energy.

On the other hand, refusing to act or avoiding change sends a self-destructive message to your own subconscious mind.  This will negatively impact on your confidence and make it harder and harder to reach the position you want, even if you’ve taken the time to correctly identify it.

Let’s go back to point #1: When you really know what you want and why, then it’s time to get busy identifying why you are the right person for it – i.e. deeply understanding your own Value Proposition – and on learning what if any intermediate steps are likely to be required to obtain it.

After all, your next employer, or your customers and staff, if you are planning to be self-employed, will also need to be excited about your Value Proposition. If you don’t understand or can’t articulate it, you won’t be excited about it and neither will anyone else.

Alternatively, if you can confidently communicate your Value Proposition, you should be able to easily convince any potential employer why you and your desired role are a perfect match. I’ll write more about identifying and selling your value proposition in future.

Next time: how to directly reach the people who control the jobs you wish to attain…

Until then, let me extend a sincere offer to you,

I’d like to invite you to a free and completely confidential 60-minute meeting with one of our Senior Career Consultants.  This is a chance to explore some of the solutions we discussed above in more detail.

Irrespective of whether or not you ultimately choose to work with us, you will walk away with practical ideas that you can use to advance your career both immediately and for years to come.

To book a meeting, simply complete the online application form or call 1300 123 377.